SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY : An Agentic Perspective

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P1: FXYDecember 11, 200022:35Annual ReviewsAR120-01Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001. 52:1–26Copyright c 2001 by Annual Reviews. All rights reservedSOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY: An AgenticPerspectiveAlbert BanduraDepartment of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-2131;e-mail: [email protected]Key Wordsbiosocial coevolution, collective ef?cacy, emergent properties,human agency, self-ef?cacys AbstractThe capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one’slife is the essence of humanness. Human agency is characterized by a number ofcore features that operate through phenomenal and functional consciousness. Theseinclude the temporal extension of agency through intentionality and forethought, self-regulation by self-reactive in?uence, and self-re?ectiveness about one’s capabilities,quality of functioning, and the meaning and purpose of one’s life pursuits. Personalagency operates within a broad network of sociostructural in?uences. In these agentictransactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Social cogni-tive theory distinguishes among three modes of agency: direct personal agency, proxyagency that relies on others to act on one’s behest to secure desired outcomes, andcollective agency exercised through socially coordinative and interdependent effort.Growing transnational embeddedness and interdependence are placing a premium oncollective ef?cacy to exercise control over personal destinies and national life.CONTENTSINTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2by Texas A&M University - College Station on 01/25/09. For personal use only.PARADIGM SHIFTS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIZING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001.52:1-26. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgPHYSICALISTIC THEORY OF HUMAN AGENCY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4CORE FEATURES OF HUMAN AGENCY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6Intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6Forethought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7Self-Reactiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8Self-Re?ectiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10AGENTIC MANAGEMENT OF FORTUITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11MODES OF HUMAN AGENCY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13UNDERMINERS OF COLLECTIVE EFFICACYIN CHANGING SOCIETIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17EMERGING PRIMACY OF HUMAN AGENCYIN BIOSOCIAL COEVOLUTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180066-4308/01/0201-0001$14.001P1: FXYDecember 11, 200022:35Annual ReviewsAR120-012BANDURAINTRODUCTIONTo be an agent is to intentionally make things happen by one’s actions. Agency em-bodies the endowments, belief systems, self-regulatory capabilities and distributedstructures and functions through which personal in?uence exercised, rather thanresiding as a discrete entity in a particular place. The core features of agency en-able people to play a part in their self-development, adaptation, and self-renewalwith changing times. Before presenting the agentic perspective of social cognitivetheory, the paradigm shifts that the ?eld of psychology has undergone in its shorthistory warrant a brief discussion. In these theoretical transformations, the coremetaphors have changed but for the most part, the theories grant humans little, ifany, agentic capabilities.PARADIGM SHIFTS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIZINGMuch of the early psychological theorizing was founded on behavioristic principlesthat embraced an input-output model linked by an internal conduit that makesbehavior possible but exerts no in?uence of its own on behavior. In this view,human behavior was shaped and controlled automatically and mechanically byenvironmental stimuli. This line of theorizing was eventually put out of vogue bythe advent of the computer, which likened the mind to a biological calculator. Thismodel ?lled the internal conduit with a lot of representational and computationaloperations created by smart and inventive thinkers.If computers can perform cognitive operations that solve problems, regula-tive thought could no longer be denied to humans. The input-output model wassupplanted by an input-linear throughput-output model. The mind as digital com-puter became the conceptual model for the times. Although the mindless organismbecame a more cognitive one, it was still devoid of consciousness and agentic capa-bilities. For decades, the reigning computer metaphor of human functioning was alinear computational system in which information is fed through a central proces-sor that cranks out solutions according to preordained rules. The architecture of theby Texas A&M University - College Station on 01/25/09. For personal use only.Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001.52:1-26. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orglinear computer at the time dictated the conceptual model of human functioning.The linear model was, in turn, supplanted by more dynamically organizedcomputational models that perform multiple operations simultaneously and inter-actively to mimic better how the human brain works. In this model, environmentalinput activates a multifaceted dynamic throughput that produces the output. Thesedynamic models include multilevel neural networks with intentional functionslodged in a subpersonal executive network operating without any consciousnessvia lower subsystems. Sensory organs deliver up information to a neural networkacting as the mental machinery that does the construing, planning, motivating, andregulating nonconsciously. Harr´e (1983) notes in his analysis of computationalismthat it is not people but their componentized subpersonal parts that are orchestratingthe courses of action. The personal level involves phenomenal consciousness andP1: FXYDecember 11, 200022:35Annual ReviewsAR120-01AGENTIC PERSPECTIVE3the purposive use of information and self-regulative means to make desired thingshappen.Consciousness is the very substance of mental life that not only makes lifepersonally manageable but worth living. A functional consciousness involvespurposive accessing and deliberative processing of information for selecting, con-structing, regulating, and evaluating courses of action. This is achieved throughintentional mobilization and productive use of semantic and pragmatic representa-tions of activities, goals, and other future events. In his discerning book on expe-rienced cognition, Carlson (1997) underscores the central role that consciousnessplays in the cognitive regulation of action and the ?ow of mental events. Therehave been some attempts to reduce consciousness to an epiphenomenal by-productof activities at the subpersonal level, to an executive subsystem in the informa-tion processing machinery, or to an attentional aspect of information processing.Like the legendary ponderous elephant that goes unnoticed, in these subpersonalaccounts of consciousness there is no experiencing person conceiving of endsand acting purposefully to attain them. However, these reductive accounts remainconceptually problematic because they omit prime features of humanness suchas subjectivity, deliberative self-guidance, and re?ective self-reactiveness. Forreasons to be given shortly, consciousness cannot be reduced to a nonfunctionalby-product of the output of a mental process realized mechanically at nonconsciouslower levels. Why would an epiphenomenal consciousness that can do nothingevolve and endure as a reigning psychic environment in people’s lives? Without aphenomenal and functional consciousness people are essentially higher-level au-tomatons undergoing actions devoid of any subjectivity or conscious control. Nordo such beings possess a meaningful phenomenal life or a continuing self-identityderived from how they live their life and re?ect upon it.Green & Vervaeke (1996) observed that originally many connectionists andcomputationalists regarded their conceptual models as approximations of cogni-tive activities. More recently, however, some have become eliminative materialists,likening cognitive factors to the phlogiston of yesteryear. In this view, people donot act on beliefs, goals, aspirations, and expectations. Rather, activation of theirnetwork structure at a subpersonal level makes them do things. In a critique ofby Texas A&M University - College Station on 01/25/09. For personal use only.Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001.52:1-26. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgeliminativism, Greenwood (1992) notes that cognitions are contentful psycho-logical factors whose meaning does not depend on the explanatory propositionsin which they ?gure. Phlogiston neither had any evidential basis nor explana-tory or predictive value. In contrast, cognitive factors do quite well in predictinghuman behavior and guiding effective interventions. To make their way success-fully through a complex world full of challenges and hazards, people have to makegood judgments about their capabilities, anticipate the probable effects of differentevents and courses of action, size up sociostructural opportunities and constraints,and regulate their behavior accordingly. These belief systems are a working modelof the world that enables people to achieve desired outcomes and avoid untowardones. Forethoughtful, generative, and re?ective capabilities are, therefore, vitalfor survival and human progress. Agentic factors that are explanatory, predictive,P1: FXYDecember 11, 200022:35Annual ReviewsAR120-014BANDURAand of demonstrated functional value may be translatable and modeled in anothertheoretical language but not eliminatable (Rottschaefer 1985, 1991).PHYSICALISTIC THEORY OF HUMAN AGENCYAs has already been noted, people are not just onlooking hosts of internal mecha-nisms orchestrated by environmental events. They are agents of experiences ratherthan simply undergoers of experiences. The sensory, motor, and cerebral systemsare tools people use to accomplish the tasks and goals that give meaning, direction,and satisfaction to their lives (Bandura 1997, Harr´e & Gillet 1994).Research on brain development underscores the in?uential role that agenticaction plays in shaping the neuronal and functional structure of the brain (Diamond1988, Kolb & Whishaw 1998). It is not just exposure to stimulation, but agenticaction in exploring, manipulating, and in?uencing the environment that counts.By regulating their motivation and activities, people produce the experiences thatform the functional neurobiological substrate of symbolic, social, psychomotor,and other skills. The nature of these experiences is, of course, heavily dependenton the types of social and physical environments people select and construct.An agentic perspective fosters lines of research that provide new insights intothe social construction of the functional structure of the human brain (Eisenberg1995). This is a realm of inquiry in which psychology can make fundamentalunique contributions to the biopsychosocial understanding of human development,adaptation, and change.Social cognitive theory subscribes to a model of emergent interactive agency(Bandura 1986, 1999a). Thoughts are not disembodied, immaterial entities thatexist apart from neural events. Cognitive processes are emergent brain activitiesthat exert determinative in?uence. Emergent properties differ qualitatively fromtheir constituent elements and therefore are not reducible to them. To use Bunge’s(1977) analogy, the unique emergent properties of water, such as ?uidity, viscosity,and transparency are not simply the aggregate properties of its microcomponentsof oxygen and hydrogen. Through their interactive effects they are transformedby Texas A&M University - College Station on 01/25/09. For personal use only.Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001.52:1-26. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orginto new phenomena.One must distinguish between the physical basis of thought and its deliberativeconstruction and functional use. The human mind is generative, creative, proac-tive, and re?ective, not just reactive. The digni?ed burial of the dualistic Descartesforces us to address the formidable explanatory challenge for a physicalistic the-ory of human agency and a nondualistic cognitivism. How do people operate asthinkers of the thoughts that exert determinative in?uence on their actions? Whatare the functional circuitries of forethought, planful proaction, aspiration, self-appraisal, and self-re?ection? Even more important, how are they intentionallyrecruited?Cognitive agents regulate their actions by cognitive downward causation aswell as undergo upward activation by sensory stimulation (Sperry 1993). PeopleP1: FXYDecember 11, 200022:35Annual ReviewsAR120-01AGENTIC PERSPECTIVE5can designedly conceive unique events and different novel courses of action andchoose to execute one of them. Under the inde?nite prompt to concoct somethingnew, for example, one can deliberatively construct a whimsically novel scenarioof a graceful hippopotamus attired in a chartreuse tuxedo hang gliding over lunarcraters while singing the mad scene from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor. In-tentionality and agency raise the fundamental question of how people bring aboutactivities over which they command personal control that activate the subpersonalneurophysiological events for realizing particular intentions and aspirations. Thus,in acting on the well-grounded belief that exercise enhances health, individualsget themselves to perform physical activities that produce health promotive bio-logical events without observing or knowing how the activated events work at thesubpersonal level. The health outcome is the product of both agent causality andevent causality, operating at different phases of the sequence.Our psychological discipline is proceeding down two major divergent routes.One line of theorizing seeks to clarify the basic mechanisms governing humanfunctioning. This line of inquiry centers heavily on microanalyses of the innerworkings of the mind in processing, representing, retrieving, and using the codedinformation to manage various task demands, and locating where the brain activityfor these events occurs. These cognitive processes are generally studied disembod-ied from interpersonal life, purposeful pursuits, and self-re?ectiveness. People aresentient, purposive beings. Faced with prescribed task demands, they act mindfullyto make desired things happen rather than simply undergo happenings in whichsituational forces activate their subpersonal structures that generate solutions. Inexperimental situations, participants try to ?gure out what is wanted of them;they construct hypotheses and re?ectively test their adequacy by evaluating theresults of their actions; they set personal goals and otherwise motivate themselvesto perform in ways that please or impress others or bring self-satisfaction; whenthey run into trouble they engage in self-enabling or self-debilitating self-talk;if they construe their failures as presenting surmountable challenges they redoubletheir efforts, but they drive themselves to despondency if they read their failuresas indicants of personal de?ciencies; if they believe they are being exploited, co-erced, disrespected, or manipulated, they respond apathetically, oppositionally,by Texas A&M University - College Station on 01/25/09. For personal use only.Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001.52:1-26. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgor hostilely. These motivational and other self-regulative factors that govern themanner and level of personal engagement in prescribed activities are simply takenfor granted in cognitive science rather than included in causal structures (Carlson1997).The second line of theorizing centers on the macroanalytic workings of so-cially situated factors in human development, adaptation, and change. Within thistheoretical framework, human functioning is analyzed as socially interdependent,richly contextualized, and conditionally orchestrated within the dynamics of var-ious societal subsystems and their complex interplay. The mechanisms linkingsociostructural factors to action in this macroanalytic approach are left largely un-explained, however. A comprehensive theory must merge the analytic dualism byintegrating personal and social foci of causation within a uni?ed causal structure.P1: FXYDecember 11, 200022:35Annual ReviewsAR120-016BANDURAIn the paths of in?uence, sociostructural in?uences operate through psychologicalmechanisms to produce behavioral effects. We shall return later to this issue andto the bidirectionality of in?uence between social structure and personal agency.CORE FEATURES OF HUMAN AGENCYThe core features of personal agency address the issue of what it means to behuman. The main agentic features are discussed in the sections that follow.IntentionalityAgency refers to acts done intentionally. For example, a person who smasheda vase in an antique shop upon being tripped by another shopper would not beconsidered the agent of the event. Human transactions, of course, involve situa-tional inducements, but they do not operate as determinate forces. Individuals canchoose to behave accommodatively or, through the exercise of self-in?uence, tobehave otherwise. An intention is a representation of a future course of action tobe performed. It is not simply an expectation or prediction of future actions but aproactive commitment to bringing them about. Intentions and actions are differentaspects of a functional relation separated in time. It is, therefore, meaningful tospeak of intentions grounded in self-motivators affecting the likelihood of actionsat a future point in time.Planning agency can be used to produce different outcomes. Outcomes arenot the characteristics of agentive acts; they are the consequences of them. AsDavidson (1971) explains, actions intended to serve a certain purpose can causequite different things to happen. He cites the example of the melancholic Hamlet,who intentionally stabbed the man behind a tapestry believing it to be the king,only to discover, much to his horror, that he had killed Polonius. The killing ofthe hidden person was intentional, but the wrong victim was done in. Some ofthe actions performed in the belief that they will bring desired outcomes actuallyproduce outcomes that were neither intended nor wanted. For example, it is notuncommon for individuals to contribute to their own misery through intentionalby Texas A&M University - College Station on 01/25/09. For personal use only.Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001.52:1-26. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgtransgressive acts spawned by gross miscalculation of consequences. Some socialpolicies and practices originally designed with well-meaning intent turn out badbecause their harmful effects were unforeseen. In short, the power to originateactions for given purposes is the key feature of personal agency. Whether the ex-ercise of that agency has bene?cial or detrimental effects, or produces unintendedconsequences, is another matter.Intentions center on plans of action. Future-directed plans are rarely speci-?ed in full detail at the outset. It would require omniscience to anticipate everysituational detail. Moreover, turning visualized futurities into reality requiresproximal or present-directed intentions that guide and keep one moving ahead(Bandura 1991b). In the functionalist approach to intentional agency enunciatedby Bratman (1999), initial partial intentions are ?lled in and adjusted, revised,P1: FXYDecember 11, 200022:35Annual ReviewsAR120-01AGENTIC PERSPECTIVE7re?ned or even reconsidered in the face of new information during execution ofan intention. We shall see shortly, however, that realization of forward look-ing plans requires more than an intentional state because it is not causally suf?-cient by itself. Other self-regulatory aspects of agency enter into the successfulimplementation of intentions. To add a further functional dimension to inten-tion, most human pursuits involve other participating agents. Such joint activi-ties require commitment to a shared intention and coordination of interdependentplans of action. The challenge in collaborative activities is to meld diverse self-interests in the service of common goals and intentions collectively pursued inconcert.ForethoughtThe temporal extension of agency goes beyond forward-directed planning. Thefuture time perspective manifests itself in many different ways. People set goalsfor themselves, anticipate the likely consequences of prospective actions, andselect and create courses of action likely to produce desired outcomes and avoiddetrimental ones (Bandura 1991b, Feather 1982, Locke & Latham 1990). Throughthe exercise of forethought, people motivate themselves and guide their actions inanticipation of future events. When projected over a long time course on mattersof value, a forethoughtful perspective provides direction, coherence, and meaningto one’s life. As people progress in their life course they continue to plan ahead,reorder their priorities, and structure their lives accordingly.Future events cannot, of course, be causes of current motivation and actionbecause they have no actual existence. However, by being represented cognitivelyin the present, foreseeable future events are converted into current motivators andregulators of behavior. In this form of anticipatory self-guidance, behavior ismotivated and directed by projected goals and anticipated outcomes rather thanbeing pulled by an unrealized future state.People construct outcome expectations from observed conditional relations be-tween environmental events in the world around them, and the outcomes givenactions produce (Bandura 1986). The ability to bring anticipated outcomes to bearby Texas A&M University - College Station on 01/25/09. For personal use only.Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001.52:1-26. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgon current activities promotes foresightful behavior. It enables people to tran-scend the dictates of their immediate environment and to shape and regulate thepresent to ?t a desired future. In regulating their behavior by outcome expecta-tions, people adopt courses of action that are likely to produce positive outcomesand generally discard those that bring unrewarding or punishing outcomes. How-ever, anticipated material and social outcomes are not the only kind of incentivesthat in?uence human behavior, as a crude functionalism would suggest. If actionswere performed only on behalf of anticipated external rewards and punishments,people would behave like weather vanes, constantly shifting direction to con-form to whatever in?uence happened to impinge upon them at the moment. Inactuality, people display considerable self-direction in the face of competing in-?uences. After they adopt personal standards, people regulate their behavior byP1: FXYDecember 11, 200022:35Annual ReviewsAR120-018BANDURAself-evaluative outcomes, which may augment or override the in?uence of externaloutcomes.Self-ReactivenessAn agent has to be not only a planner and forethinker, but a motivator and self-regulator as well. Having adopted an intention and an action plan, one cannotsimply sit back and wait for the appropriate performances to appear. Agencythus involves not only the deliberative ability to make choices and action plans,but the ability to give shape to appropriate courses of action and to motivate andregulate their execution. This multifaceted self-directedness operates through self-regulatory processes that link thought to action. The self-regulation of motivation,affect, and action is governed by a set of self-referent subfunctions. These includeself-monitoring, performance self-guidance via personal standards, and correctiveself-reactions (Bandura 1986, 1991b).Monitoring one’s pattern of behavior and the cognitive and environmental con-ditions under which it occurs is the ?rst step toward doing something to affectit. Actions give rise to self-reactive in?uence through performance comparisonwith personal goals and standards. Goals, rooted in a value system and a sense ofpersonal identity, invest activities with meaning and purpose. Goals motivate byenlisting self-evaluative engagement in activities rather than directly. By makingself-evaluation conditional on matching personal standards, people give directionto their pursuits and create self-incentives to sustain their efforts for goal attain-ment. They do things that give them self-satisfaction and a sense of pride andself-worth, and refrain from behaving in ways that give rise to self-dissatisfaction,self-devaluation, and self-censure.Goals do not automatically activate the self-in?uences that govern motivationand action. Evaluative self-engagement through goal setting is affected by thecharacteristics of goals, namely, their speci?city, level of challenge and tempo-ral proximity. General goals are too inde?nite and noncommitting to serve asguides and incentives. Strong interest and engrossment in activities is sparkedby challenging goals. The self-regulative effectiveness of goals depends greatlyby Texas A&M University - College Station on 01/25/09. For personal use only.Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001.52:1-26. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgon how far into the future they are projected. Proximal subgoals mobilize self-in?uences and direct what one does in the here and now. Distal goals alone setthe general course of pursuits but are too far removed in time to provide effectiveincentives and guides for present action, given inviting competing activities athand. Progress toward valued futures is best achieved by hierarchically structuredgoal systems combining distal aspirations with proximal self-guidance. Goals em-bodying self-engaging properties serve as powerful motivators of action (Bandura1991b, Locke & Latham 1990).Moral agency forms an important part of self-directedness. Psychological the-ories of morality focus heavily on moral reasoning to the neglect of moral conduct.A complete theory of moral agency must link moral knowledge and reasoning tomoral conduct. This requires an agentic theory of morality rather than one con?nedmainly to cognitions about morality. Moral reasoning is translated into actionsP1: FXYDecember 11, 200022:35Annual ReviewsAR120-01AGENTIC PERSPECTIVE9through self-regulatory mechanisms, which include moral judgment of the right-ness or wrongness of conduct evaluated against personal standards and situationalcircumstances, and self-sanctions by which moral agency is exercised (Bandura1991a).In competency development and aspirational pursuits, the personal standards ofmerit are progressively raised as knowledge and competencies are expanded andchallenges are met. In social and moral conduct, the self-regulatory standards aremore stable. People do not change from week to week what they regard as rightor wrong or good or bad. After people adopt a standard of morality, their negativeself-sanctions for actions that violate their personal standards, and their positiveself-sanctions for conduct faithful to their moral standards serve as the regulatoryin?uences (Bandura 1991b). The capacity for self-sanctions gives meaning tomoral agency. The anticipatory evaluative self-reactions provide the motivationalas well as the cognitive regulators of moral conduct. Self-sanctions keep conductin line with personal standards. Individuals with a strong communal ethic will actto further the welfare of others even at costs to their self-interest. In the face ofsituational pressures to behave inhumanely, people can choose to behave other-wise by exerting counteracting self-in?uence. It is not uncommon for individualsto invest their self-worth so strongly in certain convictions that they will submitto harsh and punitive treatment rather than cede to what they regard as unjust orimmoral.The exercise of moral agency has dual aspects—inhibitive and proactive(Bandura 1999b). The inhibitive form is manifested in the power to refrain frombehaving inhumanely. The proactive form of morality is expressed in the powerto behave humanely.Moral standards do not function as ?xed internal regulators of conduct, how-ever. Self-regulatory mechanisms do not operate unless they are enlisted in givenactivities. There are many psychosocial maneuvers by which moral self-reactionscan be selectively disengaged from inhumane conduct (Bandura 1991b). Severalof these mechanisms of moral disengagement center on the cognitive reconstrualof the conduct itself. This is achieved by making harmful conduct personally andsocially acceptable by portraying it as serving socially worthy or moral purposes,by Texas A&M University - College Station on 01/25/09. For personal use only.Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001.52:1-26. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgmasking it in sanitizing euphemistic language, and creating exonerating compar-ison with worse inhumanities. Other mechanisms reduce the sense of personalagency for harmful conduct through diffusion and displacement of responsibility.Moral self-sanctions are also weakened or disengaged at the outcome locus ofthe control process by ignoring, minimizing, or disputing the injurious effects ofone’s conduct. The ?nal set of practices disengage restraining self-sanctions bydehumanizing the victims, attributing bestial qualities to them, and blaming themfor bringing the suffering on themselves. High moral disengagers experience lowguilt over harmful conduct, are less prosocial, and are more prone to vengefulrumination (Bandura et al 1996b). Through selective disengagement of moralagency, people who otherwise behave righteously and considerately perpetratetransgressions and inhumanities in other spheres of their lives (Bandura 1999b,Zimbardo 1995).P1: FXYDecember 11, 200022:35Annual ReviewsAR120-0110BANDURASelf-Re?ectivenessPeople are not only agents of action but self-examiners of their own functioning.The metacognitive capability to re?ect upon oneself and the adequacy of one’sthoughts and actions is another distinctly core human feature of agency. Throughre?ective self-consciousness, people evaluate their motivation, values, and themeaning of their life pursuits. It is at this higher level of self-re?ectiveness thatindividuals address con?icts in motivational inducements and choose to act in favorof one over another. Veri?cation of the soundness of one’s thinking also reliesheavily on self-re?ective means (Bandura 1986). In this metacognitive activity,people judge the correctness of their predictive and operative thinking againstthe outcomes of their actions, the effects that other people’s actions produce,what others believe, deductions from established knowledge and what necessarilyfollows from it.Among the mechanisms of personal agency, none is more central or pervasivethan people’s beliefs in their capability to exercise some measure of control overtheir own functioning and over environmental events (Bandura 1997). Ef?cacybeliefs are the foundation of human agency. Unless people believe they can pro-duce desired results and forestall detrimental ones by their actions, they have littleincentive to act or to persevere in the face of dif?culties. Whatever other factorsmay operate as guides and motivators, they are rooted in the core belief that onehas the power to produce effects by one’s actions. Meta-analyses attest to thein?uential role played by ef?cacy beliefs in human functioning (Holden 1991,Holden et al 1990, Multon et al 1991, Stajkovic & Luthans 1998).Perceived self-ef?cacy occupies a pivotal role in the causal structure of socialcognitive theory because ef?cacy beliefs affect adaptation and change not only intheir own right, but through their impact on other determinants (Bandura 1997,Maddux 1995; Schwarzer 1992). Such beliefs in?uence whether people think pes-simistically or optimistically and in ways that are self-enhancing or self-hindering.Ef?cacy beliefs play a central role in the self-regulation of motivation through goalchallenges and outcome expectations. It is partly on the basis of ef?cacy beliefsthat people choose what challenges to undertake, how much effort to expend in theby Texas A&M University - College Station on 01/25/09. For personal use only.endeavor, how long to persevere in the face of obstacles and failures, and whetherAnnu. Rev. Psychol. 2001.52:1-26. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.orgfailures are motivating or demoralizing. The likelihood that people will act on theoutcomes they expect prospective performances to produce depends on their be-liefs about whether or not they can produce those performances. A strong sense ofcoping ef?cacy reduces vulnerability to stress and depression in taxing situationsand strengthens resiliency to adversity.Ef?cacy beliefs also play a key role in shaping the courses lives take by in?uenc-ing the types of activities and environments people choose to get into. Any factorthat in?uences choice behavior can profoundly affect the direction of personaldevelopment. This is because the social in?uences operating in selected envi-ronments continue to promote certain competencies, values, and interests longafter the decisional determinant has rendered its inaugurating effect. Thus, by

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SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY : An Agentic Perspective

The capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one’s
life is the essence of humanness. Human agency is characterized by a number of
core features that operate through phenomenal and functional consciousness. These
include the temporal extension of agency through intentionality and forethought, self-
regulation by self-reactive influence, and self-reflectiveness about one’s capabilities,
quality of functioning, and the meaning and purpose of one’s life pursuits. Personal
agency operates within a broad network of sociostructural influences. In these agentic
transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Social cogni-
tive theory distinguishes among three modes of agency: direct personal agency, proxy
agency that relies on others to act on one’s behest to secure desired outcomes, and
collective agency exercised through socially coordinative and interdependent effort.
Growing transnational embeddedness and interdependence are placing a premium on
collective efficacy to exercise control over personal destinies and national life.

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